Closets

This essay, of course, refers to the closet that all us deviants and social minorities deal with in terms of allowing or promoting the exposure of our identity to the outside world. I owe significant inspiration for this work to the scratchings of and my chatter with a certain New England Nun, who has written his own plentiful volume on the matter.

There are many types of closets, of course. And we all have more than one. I have a Politics Closet and a Sex Life Closet and a Family Closet and a Financial Closet. Most of them have their doors open, but in tact, and I tend to stay on the opposite side of the door frame from all but those whose relationship to me is relevant to said closet.

Sometime in 2000, I permanently dismantled the closet doors to my Queerness Closet. I started allowing the knowledge of my queerness in my social circles, engaging in my first sexual and romantic relationships with boys (outside the experimental forays of my childhood). I stopped actively denying my queerness upon direct enquiry, and I found it a most satisfying choice.

To be sure, I've never been a very direct exposer of my personal life. I have always maintained that the people I encounter in my life only need know the matters and content of my life to the extent they are involved in it. In many senses, my queerness quotient became all the more prominent and important a part of my post-closet life when I coupled. Finding a partner with whom I wanted to travel for life made me a different person in relation to the closets effected.

I am part of a family. My immediate family includes the man I love and will spend the rest of my life with. I love him intimately - physically and intellectually. I respect our relationship enough to make it more important than my relationship with my Closets. On an intellectual level, I know that actively or deliberately hiding or denying the fact of our relationship destroys in some small way the integrity of that relationship.

Thus the dillemma. To maintain one's privacy and the intimacy of one's intimate relationships, one should reserve the details of those relationships to the individuals involved (whether directly or indirectly). Thus it is not the affair of my coworkers, parents or extended family the goings on of my intimate life. However, that does not allow one to deny that there are many social aspects of having an important permanent family relationship. It is marriage, whether legal or merely factual.

Living in San Francisco, or even Fresno (California, really), extends to one the ability to allow such details of one's family status public view, without fear or pain or reservation. However, I am probably going to encounter an entirely different, and possibly hostile social environment when we move.

This environment has the potential of being more desireable on some levels: it will be more open, friendly and family-oriented than the current one in which I live. People's values will most likely be more neighborly and less self-destructive compared with the average skinny urban hipster in San Francisco. However, they also have the potential of reacting with violent hostility to the family values by which I live. They may see my queerness and my husband as a threat to their retrograde values. They may act on their hostilities, either through physical assault or against my financial or psychological security. They may cause public exposure of parts of my life which I do not choose to expose arbitrarily, or may actively seek to endanger my relations with others.

Given these possibilities (which may in the end be minimal), which would be the more self-destructive course: actively denying and hiding my family life and private life and indulging in self-censorship; or treating the clostes as I treat them now, and never deny who I am or what is important to me, and allow the real me be the public me?

I think that closets, in the end, are very destructive. I think we as a culture engage in far too much self-censorship and deception. We hide who we are and what matters to us, and every day it kills us a little inside. It causes corruption and blackmail, and allows others to manipulate us with threat of exposure. Overcoming such things is what gave me the courage to rock the boat and got me where I am today. I think it was better for all involved, because it bucked the status quo and asked hard questions which many had ignored for too long. We all grew, and we're all better people, and I can take credit for that because it was my closet which had to be opened up for it all to be possible.

I think that the malevolence of closets has caused the frightening ubiquity of queer leaders hiding their behaviors and desires behind the facade of wickedness, such as right-wing politicians who legislate the illigitimacy of homosexuality whilst concurrently engaging in dangerous secret homosexual liasons. It makes them liars and subjects them to potential blackmail or public humiliation, and could even have legal repurcussions should the corruption become too pervasive. A similar situation occurs in our culture which encourages ambitious businessmen to be ashamed of their achievements, and to try to circumnavigate procedural red tape through bribes and ignorance, rather than crusading against the very legislation that harms them. They thus not only endanger their professional potential, but diminish the image of the businessman throughout our society.

Closets kill. They are what make reationary politicians think they can push around a sizeable subsection of their constituents without political ramifications. They are what give bigoted leaders in all fields the permission to arbitrarily enforce unfair and inapplicable prejudice in every area of our lives. They allow criminals to vioently react against what they fear and hate, and their actions are not punished with the severity deserved, because the closets of their victims reveal an admitted self-loathing which we are willing to accept as an excuse for hostile action. They make us paranoid, and cause the very fears which have built this very essay. If we used the same amount of energy we use maintaining closets to win and enforce our rights and freedoms as fellow human beings, we would have a stronger more cohesive society, with less fear and less guilt throughout. After all, it's a feeling of helplessness and fear which causes us to erect these edifices - and yet they require a lot of us to maintain, physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. Those of us who spent a long time holding them up can be stronger than we realize if we only test that strength on a more constructive task.

Thus, I have chosen to stay on the outside, reagrdless of any new environment to which I'm relocated, ragardless of the potential hostility or vulnerability I feel. I will accept the risks and the consequent hardships this choice may cause. After all, most of the fear which forms the foundations of our closets is self-created, and only our continued maintenance of that fear keeps the threat alive. Staying on the outside no matter where I am is what will make me happy and keep me moving in the right direction. In many ways, selective use of closets is more destructive than uniform use thereof. Fear and self-censorship and a ghetto mentality will only eat away at one's happiness and self-esteem.

It's a big risk to leave one's closets behind. But I know that I can't put them back the way they were before I knew life without them. It's too good out here in the open air. I've tasted freedom and I'm not willing to give it up. Thus, I doubt you'll ever find me busily reconstructing another closet-like artifice in my own life, nor even tolerating such behavior in my peers, associates and leaders. It is everyone's choice how far they can go in rebellion against the chains of their closets. I only know that my life is better with every step I take away from them, and I can neither build more of my own nor justify the perpetuation of those built by others.